Comparing Content Management Systems

 Overview:

The content management system software most widely known as the 'CMS' is designed to create, organize, store, publish, process, display and empower your online endeavors. It has been globally realized & accepted that CMS is a natural, furthermore powerful extension of the blog concept and decided CMSs really require a separate site to explore and reveal these emerging and dynamic programs. There are literally hundreds of CMS software programs to choose from (500 in Europe alone). In this CMS software review, we've narrowed the field down to some of the most-used Open Source software based on the PHP language and using a MySQL database, with the exception of Expression Engine which is proprietary. Our selections represent only a small cross-section of what's out there ranging Posterous.com, Wordpress, Typepad, Drupal, Joomla and Vignette.

For everyone working and living online, the CMS is your next best friend. When it comes to life online, we all use CMSs in one way or another: blogging, creating websites, maintaining websites, selling products online (e-commerce), Product promotion & Marketing and many more. The redefined horizon if CMS in this 21st Century begins from creation of a system that separates creation of design & content, then work together to publish the elements. A web CMS is designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or file uploads. News articles, blogs, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures are just a sampling of the kind of content managed by a CMS. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content.

The system we chose consistently finishes at the top of the side-by-side comparisons, in many cases the gap between these and the rest is significant. Begin here by narrowing the field based on your most-needed features. From there, move to the price you need to pay to get it up and working. This will help you determine what the best CMS is for your specific project and skill set. Lets us start from the beginning

1) posterous.com:
It is a blogging site. Posterous.com is the best for startups in blogging. The best part of this is you need not register, just Send your text, photo, video or link in an e-mail to post @ posterous. com and your blog is created and updated for you. Well you can make changes to the site unless you are coding wizard. There is no cost to use it.

2) WordPress:
If you need A blog, homepage, some videos and photos the next choice is WordPress. This is best for Graphic designers, Game Designers/Creators and other creative people who want a different site which is easy to use. WordPress has countless plug-ins and themes (premium and free). The most features for the least work. This site is not as easy to customize. To use WordPress is Free, but you need someone to design it. Professionals start at $1,000; ready-made themes at $20, plus installation.

3) Typepad:
This is the best site for professionals who need A blog, homepage, some videos and photos. The best ones who make the most of this site are Journalists, bloggers and professionals who like to keep it simple (not too many widgets). The challenge in using Typepad is the integration to the Moveable Type into your existing site. It has less in-house and third-party themes compared to WordPress. When it comes to price to use Typepad it is $8.95 per month for one to three blogs with other options available too.

4) Drupal CMS: is a blog, home-page, videos, photos, e-commerce, ad server and community features. This is best for someone who needs customized content and it is not difficult to learn how to use it. Drupal can do just about anything you wish to get done from your site. The advantage here is a huge user community which is always ready to share tips to help your geek along. To use Drupal is Free as its open source, meaning that an army of developers works on plug-ins. You just need to know how to install them.

5) Joomla:
Joomla in itself is a bunch of many things together like a blog, home-page, videos, photos, e-commerce, ad server and community features. Joomla is best for businesses that need more customization than what Wordpress offers. The learning curve is less than Drupal's, but just a little less. But this is really not for someone who's looking for real customization. Its user/developer community isn't as substantial as Drupal's or WordPress's, making some essential plug-ins harder to find. To use its Free but Like Drupal, Joomla is probably too complex to develop, design and maintain yourself.

6) Vignette:
Vignette is the best for all of your needs but as you know everything comes with a price, using vignette will cost you a big chunk. This is best for big businesses that need a major, fully customizable website viz think managing reservations on a hotel site or paying bills online. This system is complex to use so you may need assistance in getting things up & running. Using Vignette may cost you Upward of $250,000.

What is important in a CMS?

Built-in Applications
Built-in applications are features and functionality that are standards with each CMS. Blog capabilities are standard across the board but only Wordpress.org and Movable Type offer a built-in photo gallery. It is seen in the side-by-side matrix, that many of these systems offer free add-ons (also called plugins) or the capability to write and install your own plugin. Chat, classifieds, contact management, data entry, database reports, forums, document management, events calendar, FAQ management, guest book, link management, mail form, dashboard, newsletter, search engine, site map, product management, syndicated content, wiki capabilities and front-end web services are the other potential criteria reviewed for built-in features.

Security
Security is a no-brainer on the web. If you want a CMS your employees/customers/clients can trust you could need a whole variety of security measures, many of which are reviewed here. Audit trail, Captcha, content approval, email verification, several different types of authentication protocols, login history, sandbox, session management, SSL compatibility (logins and pages) and versioning are all listed here on our side-by-side matrix. Some of these content management system software programs build these in - others offer them for a cost or for free.

Management
These management features describe the inherent or pluggable way the systems organize, schedule and deploy the information contained within the system. Advertising management, asset management, clipboard, content scheduling, content staging, inline administration, package deployment, sub sites/roots, themes/skins, trash, web stats, web-based template manager, web-based translation manager and workflow engine are all standards by which this category is measured.

Performance
Performance of a potential content management system is a vital, though largely behind-the-scenes component. This criteria rates the advanced caching, database replication, load balancing, page caching and static content export capabilities of these systems. Some include these as built-in architecture; others offer them free or with a cost.

E-Commerce
Ecommerce is a largely optional feature set in this particular type of content management systems (which are more focused on the publishing abilities). But if you are looking at something with advanced publishing capabilities as well as expandable commerce components you can check if your potential CMS offers them. Affiliate tracking, inventory management, pluggable payments, pluggable shipping, pluggable tax, point of sale, shopping cart, subscriptions and wish lists are all important e-commerce functionalities that could be added on to the web content management systems.

Ease of Use
when you're choosing a CMS, whether you are a blogger, developer or designer ease of use is probably the most desirable lookout, later would be the publishing and performance features. For a CMS, ease of use includes drag-n-drop content, email to forum, friendly URLs, image resizing, macro language, mass upload, prototyping, server page language, spell check, style wizard, subscriptions, template language, UI levels, undo and WYSIWYG editor. If you find you don't exactly comprehend what server page language means, we've also defined that and chances are you will recognize the functionality once explained.

Support
Support is another vital component of Open Source content management system software. Since the core and component code is updated and changed often, user forums, skeletons and comprehensible online documentation has to be readily available as an ongoing guidebook. Commercial manuals, commercial support, commercial training, developer community, online help, pluggable API, professional hosting, professional services, public forum, mailing list, smoke tests, third-party developers and users conference are all standard aspects of support for these complex and powerful programs.

Content creation, content management, publishing and presentation are the four main categories of CMS functionality. Here are just a few benefits your online business can gain by implementing a CMS:

• Reduce costs of site maintenance
• Streamline authoring process
• Increase security
• Greater consistency
• Reduce information duplication
• Improve site navigation
• Quick turnaround time for new pages and changes to your site
• Increase site flexibility
• Support remote authoring
• Increase growth capacity

This blog is a starting point to discovering the CMS of your dreams and how to make it work for you. Whatever system you choose, there are many online resources to aid you in setup and use. You may also be offered a demonstration product so you can get a feel actually using the system before you commit all your content and assets.

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